A former Iowa state senator pleaded guilty Wednesday to concealing campaign expenditures and obstructing justice as part of an endorsement-for-pay scheme that roiled the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2012.

Kent Sorenson, of Milo, Iowa, admitted in federal district court that former Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign secretly paid him $73,000 after he dramatically dropped his backing of Rep. Michele Bachmann in late 2011 and endorsed Paul’s White House bid, saying at the time that Bachmann was no longer a viable candidate.

Moving along to the subject of today’s absurdity, the tiny city of Washington, Iowa with a population of 7,000 and 11 police officers, will be receiving a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Yes, they will be employing one of these in the field:

These things normally cost $500,000, but will be given to Washington, Iowa for free under a Defense Department program that gives surplus military equipment to domestic law enforcement.

By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.

Fourteen states are represented by at least two competing petitions. The extra efforts from two states — Missouri and South Carolina — would add enough petitions to warrant reviews by the Obama administration if they were combined into petitions launched earlier.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be a big favorite in the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucuses if she runs for president, a poll indicated.

Clinton would capture 58 percent of the Iowa vote in a hypothetical run, results of the Politico-Public Policy Polling released Thursday indicated.

Clinton, 65, has said she would not remain as the country’s top diplomat during President Obama’s second term and has denied any interest in seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination again. She ran against Obama during the 2008 party primaries.

The poll indicated Vice President Joe Biden was well behind Clinton at 17 percent, followed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at 6 percent and Massachusetts Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren at 3 percent.

Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations

“Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”

When a week ago we reported the latest weekly data from the Public Policy Polling institute, many were stunned to learn that Ron Paul was in the lead in the Iowa caucuses. In light of the neverending media onslaught against the Texan, this is not very surprising. The discrepancy between PPP and other, more “accepted” polls such as the CNN/Time was borderline ridiculous, when it came to the standing of the anti-Fed crusader (attacks against whom have recently passed into the Twilight Zone as per this NYT article). Just released, however, is the latest CNN poll information, which is far more in line with what PPP predicts, namely an Iowa photofinish between Paul and Romney. “Twenty-five percent of people questioned say if the caucuses were held today, they’d most likely back Mitt Romney, with 22% saying they’d support Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Romney’s three point margin is within the poll’s sampling error. The poll’s Wednesday release comes six days before Iowa’s January 3 caucuses, which kickoff the presidential primary and caucus calendar. The Iowa caucuses are followed one week later by the New Hampshire primary.” In its previous poll, CNN had Gingrich in the lead with 33%, followed by Romney and Paul with 20% and 17%. So while CNN implicitly admits that Paul may well be in the lead net of sampling error, it masks this by making the story focus on something totally irrelevant: the fact that somehow Santorum’s support is surging.

Several hundred thousand acres of rich Midwestern farmland and even some urban areas near the Missouri River are at risk of flooding this summer during months of historically high water that experts fear will overwhelm some levees, especially older ones.

Engineers who have studied past floods say the earthen levees in rural areas are at greater risk.

“Most of the levees are agricultural levees. They’re not engineered. They’re just dirt piled up,” said David Rogers, an engineering professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

So far, most levees have held along the 811 miles the Missouri travels from the last dam at Gavins Point in South Dakota to its confluence with the Mississippi River near St. Louis. The flooding thus far has covered more than 560,000 acres of mostly rural land, including nearly 447,000 acres of farmland. The water has forced some evacuations, but the extent of the damage to may not be clear until it recedes.

That’s not expected to happen until the fall as the Army Corps of Engineers says it needs to continue releasing substantial amounts of water from upstream reservoirs inundated with heavy spring rains and melt from an above average Rocky Mountain snowpack.

The Corps predicts that the river will eventually rise high enough to flow over some 18 to 70 levees, mostly in rural areas of southeast Nebraska, southwest Iowa and Missouri. Other levees will become saturated, and water can erode their foundations, seep underneath or find other flaws to exploit.